It is a bird, its a plane, its actually a plane

 This time of year, there are a lot of planes flying around the country side spraying fields.  One evening I was in the garden pulling weeds (the only thing I have "harvested" from my garden) and noticed that a plane was starting to spray the field around our house.

For those of you who have never experienced this, I will let you know that this is very loud.  I thought about going inside to wait for them to be done, but decided it would be fun to catch some pictures instead.

 One thing that makes the spraying so interesting is how low to the ground the plane gets.

 It makes sense that they stay so low because they want the spray to go into the corn and not up in the air, but it is amazing how they barely rise up to go over the yard.  The picture above isn't very good, but you can see the plane is well below the top of the shed as it goes over the corn.

 It almost skimmed the top of the shop door as it flew over our yard.

 And it just missed the wire running from our barn to the light pole.

 It is really pretty amazing to watch these planes fly, if you can get past the sound they make.

Mennonite Monday - Cinnamon Rolls-Big and Soft

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.

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I finally have my cookbook back, so I have the long overdue recipe for Cinnamon Rolls-Big and Soft (pg 23W) for Mennonite Monday.  

Cinnamon Rolls Big and Soft

1 1/2 cups scalded milk

1 stick margarine

2/3 cups sugar

1 cup cold water

3 pkg yeast

3 eggs, well beaten

2 tsp salt

7 cups flour

Scald milk and melt margarine in milk.  Add sugar and cold water.  Mixture should be lukewarm, Add yeast, stir well and let stand 15 minutes or until it bubbles.  Add beaten eggs, salt and flour.  Dough should be firm, you do not knead this.  Stir well.  Let rise one hour.

Filling: 

1 stick margarine

2 tsp cinnamon

1 cup sugar

raisins - optionals

Roll out dough and spread with softened margarine, then sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and raisins.  Roll up.  Divide into fourths.  Make 6 rolls from each fourth.  Put onto greases pan.  Dip hand in flour and smash down.  Let rise one hour. Bake 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees.  Cool. 

Frosting: 

1/2 cup water

1/4 stick margarine

1 tsp vanilla

powdered sugar

Simmer water and margarine.  Add sifted powdered sugar to make firm frosting.  

 Scalded milk 

 Adding margarine. 

Adding the Yeast

Beating the eggs

Adding salt to the flour to mix before adding it to the rest of the ingredients.

Adding the bubbly yeast mixture to my bowl.

Mixing in the flour.

The dough almost completely mixed together.

Before the dough had time to rise.

I still put the dough infront of the heater when it isn't very hot in the house

After rising for an hour

Rolling out the dough. It was nice to use my pampered chef mat, but I forgot to flour it, which made it harder to roll. 

Adding sugar for the filling.

Ready to roll with butter, sugar and cinnamon.  I skipped the raisins.

I had to deal with the dough sticking alot since I didn't flour the mat, but after some work I got it rolled.

The dough does expand when you start rolling, so you will need a large space for this part.

I cut my cinnamon rolls with a knife, but I have heard that people use unscented floss, but I didn't have any on hand, so I didn't try that route.

Before the rolls have time to rise they look a little rough.

Pushing them down with flour before letting them rise for an hour.

After baking. 

Water and margarine for the frosting.

Adding vanilla

Adding powdered sugar.  You will need a good amount of powdered sugar.

Once the frosting was thickened.

Fresh cinnamon rolls with a lot of frosting.

In my experience, making cinnamon rolls was not very hard, however it is a long process with letting the dough rise twice. If I were going to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast, I would start the process the night before.